Building a Vocabulary

how my dance teacher gets us to groove

I am taking African Dance this semester. This is a whole new experience for me - generally, I am not very "in my body." Usually, I stay in my head, or in my history, or in my future. Being in my body and being "in the present" do not happen automatically for me. However, both are necessary to dance. Both are essential for dance. Needless to say, I struggle in this class. It is safe to say that getting my top-half to shake in a different way than my bottom-half, but still simultaneously move my top and my bottom - well, it is safe to say that is my personal Mt. Everest. Not an easy endeavor for me. I get so exasperated.

My teacher, Nii Armah, relies on mimicry to teach us. He will demonstrate the move two or three times (always instructing us to "watch!" - as in "stay still and observe" before trying it out ourselves; like Simon Says for college students, and we aren't very good at it). Once he's done, it is our chance to replicate what we just witnessed - that's always chaotic. With the first attempt, almost nobody gets the move to sync exactly with the beat of the drums. And we don't stand a chance of oozing anywhere as much "juice" as Nii Armah during these moves. "Juice" is his term for the seemingly-effortless, but intentional energy that radiates humanity, invitation, and pure physicality with his every motion. African dance is about two things, he claims: the "juice" and the drums. We get it - eventually. Enough repetition seems to do the trick, but only if I am present and alert (mindful) during each repetition.

Being deliberate helps, yet being playful helps more.

Beyond mimicry though, which sometimes works but can sometimes halt any sense of forward progress, Nii Armah starts with the utmost basics. He gets us to use our limbs in new, but minimal ways - like stepping down, flat, with our right foot, and stepping up on our left toe. The timing that this teaches us - the rhythm of the "bobbing" up and down - becomes a building block for later, more complex moves. These moves are limited to a small range of motion. I didn't know it until recently, but these moves are foundational and generative.

After we went on to faster, more elaborate moves, I thought we had abandoned all the simple stuff (to my dismay - I was finally getting those motions, why something harder?!). But, if I concentrate, I can feel the same rhythms and movement of the basic moves underlying the harder ones. The basics pop up everywhere and breed the grandiose gestures.

Nii Armah said, "What we are doing is building a vocabulary. A vocabulary so you can use it in more patterns and arrangements later on." I think this is what all teaching is: providing the pieces, getting students familiar with the curves and the edges, so that later, when called for, students know how those curves and edges can fit together (or perhaps fit inside one another).